Tea Time

May 03, 2014

I love tea, you guys. Lately I have even preferred it to coffee. I go through cycles of drinking exclusively coffee to exclusively...

I love tea, you guys. Lately I have even preferred it to coffee. I go through cycles of drinking exclusively coffee to exclusively tea and then mixing it all up again. Variety is, after all, the spice of life. The spice to my life at this moment is tea. I've been drinking a lot of Chai tea from Chai Mookie, a Brooklyn-based company always present at monthly pop-ups, festivals, smorgasburgs, and also sold at my local coffee shop too. It's really great tea, and they carry varieties of chai, not just one blend. I like the one with black pepper.

Anyways… We've deliberated on why coffee cake contains no coffee, or why tea cake contains no tea. We don't get it, I don't get it. Do you get it?

These staple cakes are good go-withs to morning hot drinks, but when I hear "spice cake" I am going to expect spice. When you tell me you made a "carrot cake" I expect a cake that contains carrots for the love of god-- not just a cake that goes well with carrots. So we are breaking the mold wide open here, friends. My cakes have the profile of their namesakes. This is a Lemon Zinger Loaf. There isn't a mysterious twist of fate that made me exclude the key ingredient, Lemon Zinger Tea, from the loaf. I'm real. I don't play cake games.

It's a breakfast cake, so I decided to let sugar take a backseat and let more wholesome sweeteners do all the work, opted for whole wheat flour rather than white, then sprinkled some chia and sliced almonds over the top of the batter in place of a sugary glaze. I usually take my tea without sugar, so why should I make it the MVP of my tea cake? Don't worry, it's sweet. You'll like it.

I used silken tofu for this, but if you prefer not to, or don't have it on hand, almond yogurt would be my next choice (i.e. I went to make this with almond yogurt, but had none, so I used silken tofu). Now go make some cake for breakfast. It's tea time.

Preheat oven to 350ºF and spray a 9x5" loaf pan with some oil.
Puree the silken tofu in either a blender or food processor and transfer it into a large mixing bowl, making sure you scrape out as much as possible, not leaving much left in the blender. Add the coconut sugar, maple syrup, coconut oil, lemon zinger, lemon juice and whisk together until combined. Sift in the flours, baking soda, baking powder, salt and ginger. Whisk again until combined and pour batter into your prepared loaf pan. Smooth out the top and sprinkle with almonds and chia seeds. Bake for 35 minutes, or until a cake tester or toothpick comes out clean when you insert it into the middle of the loaf with no batter residue. Let cool before taking loaf out of the pan.